فصلنامه پژوهش های اقتصادی ایران
پیاپی 89 (زمستان 1400)

The experience of some countries indicates that export has been an important factor in economic growth and its sustainability. Cost advantage, knowledge and innovation are the factors that affect export. Cost advantage in turn depends on various factors such as learning by doing. Learning leads to the expansion of international trade and economic growth by reducing production costs and creating a competitive advantage. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate learning by doing and investigating its impact on industrial exports at four-digit ISIC codes level during 2011 to 2015. For this purpose, three different indicators have been operationalized to quantify learning and three export supply models have been estimated using panel data technique. Obtained results indicate that in all three models, learning by doing has a positive and significant effect on export supply. In other words, the effect of learning on exports is not sensitive to the way of offering operational definition. Also, the variables of trade openness, research and development costs and human capital all have positive and significant effects on the export of four-digit ISIC code industries.

The expansion of the globalization process has increased the relationships among financial markets in different countries, which itself has motivated investors to move among them to make more profit. Given the situation in Iran after sanctions, the possibility of investing in well-known financial markets is facing with the risk of sanctions. The present study aims to evaluate the existence of volatility spillover among the financial markets of Iran and Islamic oil exporters countries.  To this aim, a multivariate factor stochastic volatility (SV) model and stock price index data were used with daily frequency for the period 12/05/2008-02/19/2020. Based on the results, the main hypothesis that the volatility spillover among the financial markets of OPEC oil-exporting Islamic countries follows a common and uniform random trend is accepted for the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, but not for Iran and Nigeria. Therefore, diversifying the portfolio for Iranian investors in the financial markets of OPEC Islamic oil exporters can reduce the investment risk in the long run which make such economies an appropriate investment destination for Iranians due to the conditions of sanctions.

Human capital is a hidden variable. In different economic studies, various proxies have been used as a proxy for human capital, including the average literacy index, the number of graduates or the average number of years of schooling. This study will review the economic literature first, and then the three pillars of human capital index including education variables, skills and health will be analyzed for the Iranian economy. In addition, by using fuzzy approach and Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System, the human capital index in the Iranian economy during the 1981-2019 period will be estimated. The results of this calculation shows that during the period under study, the human capital index has continuously grown; in 1981, the index was estimated at 0.13 and 0.59 in 2019. On this basis, it can be stated that human capital in the Iranian economy during the 1981 to 2019 period has grown significantly. This accumulation of human capital can be seized in the production processes, leading to increase in production and productivity..

Informal employment typically poses many problems for communities and governments. For example, most informal workers face problems relating to poverty and economic insecurity due to the lack of a social security organization and labor law in the informal sector. Informal employment also has detrimental effects on governments, such as incorrect estimates of GDP and tax cuts. Accordingly, identifying the factors affecting informal employment will greatly help economic policymakers to control this phenomenon. This study attempts to examine the determinants of informal employment in urban and rural areas of Iran between 2013 and 2019. To this aim, applying the urban and rural household income-expenditure survey in the mentioned period, the share of informal employment in the total employment was calculated. Preliminary data processing illustrates that, on average, 45.1% of urban employees and 74.6% of rural employees are engaged in informal occupations. The results of estimating the research model indicate that employees' level of education and marital status have an indirect (favorable) effect on informal employment in urban and rural areas. There is also a U-shaped relationship between age and informal employment. At the same time, being a man in urban areas and being a woman in rural areas increase informal employment.

This paper investigates the factors affecting export diversification in Iran. As deducted from heterogeneous trade theory, the main variables of interest in this paper's baseline specification are entry and trade costs. For this purpose, Theil index is calculated for export diversification.  This index is obtained for ten selected two-digit commodity codes in the HS coordinate system.  Then the basic model is introduced and estimated by the generalized least squares (GLS) method. Estimated results show that diversification depends negatively on domestic and foreign market entry costs. Therefore, reducing the unnecessary rules for setting up enterprises, customs regulations, creating transportation and financial facilities can help to improve the Iran's export diversification.

In the present study, the competitiveness of Iran's agricultural, industrial and in global markets services sectors has been investigated and analyzed. This measurement was taken by calculating four indicators of  relative comparative advantage (RCA) at the level of two- and four-digit codes of the International Industrial Standard Classification System for Economic Activities (ISIC) and using the data of Iran-world input-output tables during the period 1996-1995. The results show that out of 3 main subgroups of agriculture, only subdivisions of agricultural products, horticulture, livestock and poultry and hunting and other related activities, and out of 19 subdivisions of industry, only subdivisions of mineral extraction and other related materials, have RCA in all studied years. Other subsections have fluctuations in the presence or absence of comparative advantage, and some have a distinct RCA pattern. This situation has existed in 10 service sub-sectors of the country, but in general, the relative export advantage for service sub-sectors has not been identified in the whole period. In addition, the results of RCA index compatibility tests by performing 3 Cardinal, Ordinal and Dichotomous Measures show that the results of Ordinal tests are more satisfactory than the results of Dichotomous and Cardinal tests and therefore, the present study provides an Ordinal interpretation of RCA indicators in the formation of economic policies. Finally, the results of stability tests show that the indicators of comparative export advantage did not have a stable trend during the period.

The necessity to create stable and transparent economic conditions has made combating money laundering a universal policy on the agenda of parliaments and governments by all countries. This is currently the specific issue of the Iran monetary and banking system. In this regard, the infrastructural approach includes all effective dimensions of international anti-money laundering mechanisms such as Basel Committee indices and recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force, and the experiences of other countries show that applying factors of this approach can enhance Iran monetary and banking system internationally and decreases money laundering risk. In order to identify the challenges in this area and reach a model which includes a set of infrastructural factors in fighting money laundering, this study uses qualitative and quantitative parts; in qualitative part, the criteria raised by experts through face-to-face interviews and multi-stage coding, content analysis, and Fuzzy Delphi method, and in quantitative part, the criteria raised by questionnaire and factor analysis technique, and the RMSEA index have been used for fitting the model. Based on international guidelines, the proposed infrastructural model consists of functional, contextual, and structural dimensions and findings indicate that a systematic application of the proposed model improves the efficiency of anti-money laundering system and helps optimal management of anti-money laundering challenges of banks. In this regard, the relative weights of legal, political, geopolitical, and risk-taking components of the structural dimension highlight the importance and necessity of focusing on this dimension and its components of the Iran banking system.